LDS NEST BLOG

Back in July we had Youth Conference. In ﻿that post﻿ I mentioned that we did service videos but couldn't share them because they weren't edited yet. Well, now they are! Our Stake had a premiere night to show them to the youth. We did a red "carpet", awards, paparazzi, and dressed up. Here are photos from that night.

I was in charge of the overall project so I thought I'd share how we went about doing it incase you want to try. We did four for our stake but I would recommend doing one on a ward level.

1) Have a message that you want to share2) Have some guidelines as adult leaders.These were some of ours • to use the youth as much as possible, especially in the video • have a point/message to it • have the youth part of something bigger than they are • done so it won't be lame :) (don't have youth speak or act much, keep it simple)3) Have some conceptual idea how you want it to video tape it. Copy other's ideas with variation. For example • Make Your Mark was based on the video ﻿Flourish﻿ by ﻿Dana Tanamachi-Williams﻿ • True Beauty & Real Men were based on this video An Experiment in Words (or ﻿36 Smiles﻿) from the Pleasant Grove Utah Mount Mahogany Stake 4th Ward • Get approval of the concept summaries4) Make a committee • Ours included Stake Youth (SYC youth), Stake YWYM Presidency members, and Specialists • Have youth go over video concepts and make changes, suggestions, and/or other ideas • Re-write concept summaries and get approval5) Get Specialists. These had to be skill specific. Meaning they had to be artistic, conceptual thinkers, or have video/editing skills. It would have been nice to have all professionals but that's usually not the case in the church for projects like this. This is a large project that requires Approve and call specialists. • Make Your Mark - construction crew (chalkboard), design, videographer, video editor • True Beauty - Materials, videographer, video editor • Real Men - Props, videographer, video editor • Music Moves Me - transportation, music, talent, videographer, video editor6) Meet together as a whole.There's a lot of moving parts/people here so the sooner you can meet all together the better. The truth is, this didn't happen for some groups until the morning of. 7) Video tape. We used a 3 hour block of Youth Conference to video tape. Every group (approx 220 total youth) worked at the same time. Before taping, we had a speaker for each group (except Music) talk about the topic for 15 minutes to set the tone and share the idea. Video tapping was a one shot deal so we had 2-3 videographers for each video. 8) Edit video. This is basically a one person job. This is where your conceptual idea has to have been communicated clearly since it's this person who will ultimately pick and choose what goes into the video. Some or parts of our videos didn't turn out the way the committee had intended. Communication is key but even then sometimes things just work out differently than planned. Stake YWYM leaders did an initial viewing with recommended changes.9) Final Approval. Our Stake Presidency had final approval and recommendations before the youth viewed them. 10) Be realist, gracious, and thankful. Remember we all do this for free. Usually we don't actually know what we're doing. Being realist (for the planned and unplanned), gracious (accepting what people can/can't do), and thankful (that it came together at all) to all who help.

This video project was out of a lot of youth and leader's comfort zones. It's hard to say how things you've never done will turn out. The uncertainty adds anxiety. Hopefully these steps will help keep the stress level low. This is a project that I would do again.

I think this is a new face for service. It's not the traditional shovels and rags but a lot of work nonetheless. Which translated into 15,000 Facebook views for about the first week. Not bad for a bunch of mostly amateurs.